Studio Ghibli/Trivia

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• Anime First: Although most of the studio's works are based on a book, the studio still has a handful of films that are original concepts.
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, released before the studio's official founding, is an interesting case. The manga was created and released first as a concept for the film, and its success lead to the self adapted movie (which lead to the founding of Ghibli). The film only adapts one and a half of the manga's seven volumes, most of which are released after the film. Although the manga was released first, it only served to pave the way for the film even though it vastly expanded on its universe.
• Career Resurrection: The Red Turtle was the first critically-acclaimed films by Ghibli after their restructuring resulting from the failures of When Marnie Was There and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Beginning in 1997 with Princess Mononoke, every last one of their films has an All-Star Cast of veteran Japanese actors for their main characters, some of those including popular singers and stage actors. Even before then, Ghibli has used celebrities to voice supporting and main characters, such as Shigesato Itoi who voices Satsuki and Mei's father in My Neighbor Totoro and Issei Takahashi, who voices Seiji Amasawa in Whisper of the Heart.
  • In their English dubs produced by Disney and GKIDS, they have a mix of professional voice actors as well as celebrities who don't normally do voice acting.
• Channel Hop:
  • Castle in the Sky was distributed by Toei, and My Neighbor Totoro was distributed by Toho. When Kiki's Delivery Service, Toei distributed the film once again. By 1991, all of Ghibli's films would be distributed by Toho, which has been a member of Ghibli's production committes since 2002. So, all of the Ghibli films in Japan have been distributed by Toho in their theatrical releases.
  • The North American releases have a long history:
    • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was licensed first by New World Pictures and released it as the infamous Warriors of the Wind.
    • My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso and Kiki's Delivery Service was dubbed into English by Streamline Pictures for screenings on Japan Airlines. Of these, My Neighbor Totoro was released in North America on VHS by Troma and 20th Century Fox.
    • For Grave of the Fireflies, it was licensed first by Central Park Media and later by ADV Films, who then restructered into Sentai Filmworks, who released a Blu-Ray with their own dub in addition to the original CPM dub. To this day, Sentai still retains the rights since the film isn't represented by Studio Ghibli.
    • Disney negotiated with Tokuma in 1996 to acquire the rights all of their films and dub them with an All-Star Cast for future distribution of their works; their divisions Miramax and Touchstone distributed Princess Mononoke and Touchstone Pictures, respectively. In 2011, GKIDS took control of the theatrical rights to the Ghibli films and would later go on to license From Up on Poppy Hill, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There, Only Yesterday and Ocean Waves. Six years later, GKIDS decided to take control of the other rights to the films except Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises, as the later films are still licensed by Sentai Filmworks and Disney, respectively. Thus, GKIDS owns the theatrical, television and home video rights to every Ghibli film except for Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises.
• Creator Killer: The failures of both When Marnie Was There and The Tale of Princess Kaguya caused the studio to restructure itself.
• No Export for You: Until Disney negotiated a deal with Ghibli's former owner Tokuma Shoten in 1996, any attempt to watch a Ghibli film in North America aside from My Neighbor Totoro was impossible.
  • Ghibli also has entire catalogues of short films exclusive to their museum and theme park. Want to watch them? You'll have to travel to Japan.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The reason GKIDS took so long to license The Wind Rises, finally buying the home media rights to it in 2020, seven years after the release of the film.
• Screwed by the Network: After GKIDS bought out the Ghibli film license from Disney, they confirmed that they would not release digital copies of their films. This is a result of Studio Ghibli's own Executive Meddling, since even Disney couldn't do it back when they had most of those licenses.
• The Wiki Rule: strong with Ghibli; there's not one, but two wikis dedicated to the work of the company as a whole. See also the Howl's Moving Castle Wiki and The Borrowers wiki, dedicated to book series that Ghibli has turned into movies.